Hang on, is it MEANT to sound like that?

PiL, "Memories"

I think there are a lot of moments like this in music -- bad tape splices, level or EQ or compression shifts, often just bad patches of tape -- that come clear so late in the process of an otherwise-great recording that they're not fixable. Which leaves you with the choice between, say, (a) scrapping "Blue Monday" and starting again from the ground up, or (b) just trying to make it as non-noticeable as possible and hoping people don't mind too much. If I were recording a band and had "Blue Monday" underway, there's no way in hell I'd go back to square one over a little blip.

In "DO you love me" the engineer just faded out when they go out of tune and then fades back in.

My first such moment was in the Velvets Lady Godiva's Operation, where Lou sings (well, says) "Neatly pumps air." It sounds like a later patch-in, or he was just too close to the mic.

When I first heard the dive-bomb guitars all over My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, I thought there was some sort of mastering error: it sounded like a record with the whole punched an inch off center, or like the tape had stretched horribly. Of course, I came around.

Another album that sounded like a ton of crud to me when I first heard it was Tragically Hip's Day For Night. Not that I was any big fan of theirs or anything--we were doing a midnight launch of that album at one of my stores, and we started playing the thing at 11:59pm and nearly blew the speakers, it was so lo-fi and distorted. (We were expecting the same old good production/bland boogie-rock, and they thwarted us by delivering a sludgy homebrew-style recording that actually signalled the beginning of a slightly more interesting sonic direction. Yay for that, but it made for a rather more subdued midnight sale.)

In the version of "She's Lost Control" on 'Substance,' there's one sort of glitchy snare hit that always bugs me.

Also, my version of 'Perfect Prescription' has a fucking hiccup on "Ode to Street Hassle." It's the Taang! version, which is really good and has lots of cool extras, but that always makes me cringe a little. Right after he says "These things have got to be..." Anyone else's copy do this? I returned it the first time, ordered it again, only to have it still be there--shit!

I LIKE mistakes and wierd little things like this. I'm all in favour of leaving them in. I haven't noticed anything odd about Blue Monday, but I'll check it out. I guess the classic is "Starwberry Fields Forever" where they spliced verse one from an early take onto the front-end of a later recording. The whole ambience changes and the mellotron sounds different. Another Beatles example is "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - anyone else reckon the Mellotron is way out of tune the who way through?

The other classic is "Louie Louie" (Kingsmen original) where the singer comes in several bars too early after the solo, then stops when he realises. By then the drummer has figured that something's wrong and try to 'cover up' the mistake with a ham-fisted drum roll. The singer then comes back in and off they go again!

There's also a superb wrong note by Ian MacLagan in The Small Faces "Get Yourself Together" - it's in the first couple of bars of the organ solo in the middle.

I suppose these are not good examples, since records were made faster and under more primitive conditions in the '60s - I'll rack my brains to think up some more recent ones.

a pedant writes:
Louie Louie was not orginally by the Kingsmen, and did anyone actually notice things like the Strawberry Fields splice (for example) until it was pointed out in all those Beatles documentaries, books and radio programmes? if you're not listening out for something like that i'd doubt you'd notice

Nearly every Kraftwerk ellpee has at least some glitch somewhere. In Computer World alone, there's an audible "pop" near the end of "Pocket Calculator", and slighty inept mixing of the "number voices" at the end of "Computer World 2". In their other stuff, there's a glitchy snare in "Europe Endless" near the "Life is Timeless" line, and a wonky start to the solo at the end of "Showroom Dummies". The folks in Kraftwerk seem to be big on doing loads and loads of live takes, and then selecting the one with "maximum expression", even if it has a mistooky in it...

Old Fart!!!!!!!!!!

even robots make mistakes!

my dad once bought a record to give to someone for a birthday (classical, DGG) and playing to check discovered that on side two there was whispering near the microphone. he claims it was two ladies discussing the purchase of tights - but when i heard it, it was just *mumble mumble wss wss wss*

sadly i forgot to take a note what the LP was

BTW While we're on the "Blue Monday" subject, (Yes, the mix does seem to change on the word "mistaken", doesn't it?) has anyone noticed the drumbeat right at the start of the song? When the song was originally played on UK radio, the first two beats were missing, and instead it started on the run of bassdrum 16ths, which gave the beat a completely different inital feel, and it was only obvious how the beat was actually meant to sound when the synth sequence started to fade in on top of it, signposting the start and end of the bars. This wasn't even a "radio edit"- Radio 1 regularly played the full thing, minus of course the two "missing" beats. However on virtually every version released on record, the beats are restored. Does anyone know why this is? Is there a "special radio version" I haven't heard of?

Old Fart!!!

well the radio stations would all have the free promo copies. presumably the promo pressing is the incorrect one

This is a good question; I like the Doc's answers. Things being *out of tune* is esp. interesting, because so rare (save with various singers, like Sumner).

Byrds and Stones' early records: often the bassist doesn't seem to know where he's going. try verse 3 (?) of 'Feel A Whole Lot Better', and the Stones' 'Little Red Rooster'.

Dear pedant (m. jemm..). I knew that "Louie, Louie" wasn't written by the Kingsmen, but didn't know that it had been recorded before.

Strawberry Fields? Yes, I knew something odd was going on way back, it's not hard to spot.

LouieLouie.net has the history of the song. it was written in 1957, and the Kingsmen only covered it in 63, so there were several versions before them

every Jimmy Page solo probably qualifies an an example.

Favourite example ever of this: guitar coming in on 'Search and Destroy.' Inept mixing becomes genius aural oddity!

I don't know owt about "bars" and shiznit, but on Gorgoroth's "Destroyer", their vocalist for that song says his first word on a three instead of on a four. You can tell because he stops, then comes in when he should have done.

Cornelius makes deliberate use of a different song mixed into one, marked by a clicking sound of tapes getting switched around, on "Chapter 8 - Seashore + Horizon"

oh that reminds me, Tortoise 'Djed', has the sort of CD skipping section

As the liner notes to the box set explain, the velvets thing *was* meant to sound like that -- it was an early audio "experiment" in multitracking. The one which always gets me is in "Blind" on Lotion's Nobody's Cool LP. One line is clearly overdubbed, way out of the mix, and sticks out even moreso on headphones.